What You Can Buy in BABI for $208

This week I hope to write a little about each BABI team and it's prospects, and then we'll have "The Grand Opening". But first I need to make a few comments with whatever we are stuck with this season.

The Doc and I are quite satisfied with the guys in the Pickled clubhouse, though our hitters seem to already be demonstrating a level of injury-proneness exemplified by their leader, Cliff Floyd. We've got 3 outfielders on the DL (Werth with his broken wrist, Mohr-on with his broken head and now Jose Cruz with an ominous bad back), and we've had Cliff Floyd miss several days as well as his teammate Kaz Matsui who at least played this weekend. Throw in David Bell, who seems a daily candidate for a couple of weeks off, and you’ve got one hurtin’ team.

Despite that, we’ve got a whole bunch of starting players, (only Luis Gonzalez is a backup, and he'll get at least 350 at bats) and I’d be shocked if we weren’t contending for the league lead in AB’s, which usually means lots of RBI points. If everyone is healthy, there are plenty of hitting points and we hope enough steals to stay in the middle. Lawton, Bradley, Cruz, Floyd, Matsui, Eckstein and Drew are all candidates for double digit steals, and 100 steals usually gets you 6 or 7 steal points.

We’re excited about our pitching. We only planned on 4 starters, our 2 keepers Tomko and Suppan, plus a stud (Pedro, who so far is exactly that) and Noah Lowry (forget that outing in Colorado Friday). We walked out with Webb and Hampton (pitched a beauty tonight) too, and so far, so good. The best thing we can say about Looper is they have absolutely no one to replace him as the closer. The other 3 guys (Hammond, Sanchez and King) are exactly what we had in mind – safe middle relief guys who should give us 70-80 innings each of decent numbers and a few vulture wins.

I always have a hard time scanning the box scores in the first month of the season because I can’t remember who we have. After looking at the Giant’s box, we have to look at the Dodgers next with 4 starters there (Bradley, Phillips, Drew and Werth when he gets back) plus Duaner. We’ve got 3 Mets starters (Matsui, Mientkiewicz and Floyd) plus Pedro and Looper. And we’ve got 3 D-backs: Cruz, Tracy (looks like he may really be Mark Grace) and Webb. After that, it’s just one or two here and there, with a few teams missing (no Brewers, Nationals, Marlins, Astros or Reds).

There is a traditional overbidding on Giants in our group. We were stunned when the bidding stopped at $11 on Lowry (we were ready to go to 14) and so was Jeff Busch who nominated him to get someone to spend lots of money early and expected he might go as high as $20. I wonder if there is an inverse aversion to spending money on Dodgers. Bradley went for a reasonable $23, Kent for $25, Valentin for $8 and Phillips for 7. All of the other Dodger starters were kept.